Archive for category: Energy Connections Articles

By Kent Singer, CREA executive director

If you are in a certain age group and attempted to learn the guitar as a teenager, I bet you mastered as least one riff: the opening notes to the 1972 Deep Purple hit “Smoke on the Water.” (You know it: bump, bump, bum…bump, bump, da-dum…bump, bump, bum…bump-bum.) And while the English bandmates who formed Deep Purple probably didn’t have Colorado in mind (despite the name of their biggest hit), the band’s name aptly describes the current balance of political power in Colorado.

At both the state and federal level, we have an equal mix of Republicans and Democrats in control of our legislative and executive branches. In fact, voter registration in Colorado is split fairly evenly among Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters. So where some states are reliably blue (Democrat) or red (Republican), when it comes to political majorities, Colorado is reliably purple.

Purple state
Colorado has one Republican U.S. senator and one Democrat U.S. senator. In the 2016 election, Democrat incumbent Michael Bennet defeated Republican Darryl Glenn in a race that turned out much closer than the polls predicted. Even though Bennet raised and spent much more money than Glenn, his margin of victory was only 3 percentage points.

Republican incumbent Cory Gardner was elected in 2014 when he defeated the favored Democrat incumbent Mark Udall. The results of that race seemed to put on hold on what appeared to be a trend toward a Democrat-leaning electorate in Colorado.

The same purple theme applies to our congressional delegation. Of Colorado’s seven members of the U.S. House of Representatives, four are Republicans and three are Democrats. The three Democrats (Reps. Diana DeGette, Jared Polis and Ed Perlmutter) represent primarily Denver and the suburbs near Denver, while the four Republicans (Reps. Ken Buck, Mike Coffman, Doug Lamborn and Scott Tipton) represent the rural areas of the state, as well as urban counties farther from Denver.

At the state legislative level, the purple theme continues. The state senate has a narrow (18-17) Republican majority, while the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives expanded to 37-28 after the 2016 general election. This balance of power means that only legislation that has bipartisan support will pass during the next two sessions of the Colorado General Assembly.

Since the political activities of the Colorado Rural Electric Association are focused at the state level, the composition of the General Assembly and CREA’s relationship with its members is critical to the success of CREA initiatives. CREA’s legislative team is devoted to informing and educating state legislators about the cooperative difference and how legislation can impact the consumer at the end of the line. The CREA team also works hard to share with legislators and other stakeholders the extraordinary work being done by Colorado electric co-ops to respond to the changing demands of electric consumers.

Balanced leadership
With Colorado’s term limits, the leadership in both houses of the General Assembly changes frequently. Since the individuals in leadership positions set the agenda for their respective houses, we president of the Senate.

For the two years of the 71st General Assembly (the 2017 and 2018 sessions), the speaker of the House will be Rep. Crisanta Duran. Rep. Duran will serve her fourth term in the legislature representing House District 5 in central Denver. Rep. Duran served as the chairwoman of the Joint Budget Committee in 2014, and she served as the majority leader in the 2015 and 2016 sessions. She sponsored a variety of legislative initiatives, including efforts to spur economic development, extend unemployment benefits for Coloradans learning new workforce skills and increase the renewable energy requirements applicable to Colorado’s electric co-ops.

Speaker-designate Duran has a particular interest in rural economic development: “One of my priorities has been to make sure that small businesses thrive and folks have good jobs in rural Colorado. That’s why I passed a bill to provide tax benefits to new businesses through creating ‘jump-start zones’ in rural areas of the state. I’m going to continue to make sure we don’t take anyone in Colorado for granted and leave no one behind.”

Although Rep. Duran does not have any electric co-op service territory in her legislative district, she is familiar with Colorado’s electric co-ops. She joined in support of recent legislation revising the co-op requirements under Colorado’s renewable portfolio law, as well as adjustments to the co-op election law.

During the 2013 legislative session, Rep. Duran was the prime house sponsor of S.B. 13-252, the bill that increased the renewable energy requirements for the co-ops. Since the passage of that bill, the work done by Colorado’s electric co-ops to integrate additional renewable energy into their power supply portfolios has not gone unnoticed by Rep. Duran: “I applaud efforts by local co-ops to generate more electricity from renewable sources. It’s really inspiring to see folks in Colorado taking the lead to make sure we can tap our wind, water and sun to create the energy we need and keep it in our communities.”

The Senate president for the 71st General Assembly will be Sen. Kevin Grantham, a two-term state senator from Cañon City. Sen. Grantham represents Senate District 2, a district that includes Fremont, Teller, Park, Clear Creek and parts of El Paso counties. Sen. Grantham was raised in a farming community in Crowley County and currently works as a real estate appraiser at Grantham Appraisal Service in Cañon City. He is also a member of the Joint Budget Committee, a position he will relinquish when he assumes his role as Senate president on January 11.

Sen. Grantham has long been a supporter of Colorado’s electric co-ops, and he was the prime Senate sponsor of several bills recently initiated by CREA. During the 2015 legislative session, Sen. Grantham sponsored a bill that allowed co-ops to use purchases from community solar gardens to comply with the requirements of Colorado’s renewable energy law. S.B. 15-046 also authorized electric co-ops to subtract their sales of electricity to industrial loads for purposes of calculating their “retail” distributed generation obligation. These changes made compliance with the renewable portfolio law more economic for co-op consumers.

In the 2016 session, Sen. Grantham sponsored CREA’s bill to make sure that all ballots are counted in co-op board elections and to reduce the costs of those elections. He also co-sponsored a bill that clarifies that sales of electricity for residential purposes are not subject to the state sales tax.

Sen. Grantham believes strongly in the idea that electric co-ops are successful because they are owned and governed by their members, and maintaining this independence is important: “Colorado’s electric co-ops have done a great job providing safe, reliable and affordable electricity to rural Colorado for over 75 years. The co-op business model and local control works, and we’ll oppose any proposed interference with that local control.”

Sen. Grantham’s take on renewable energy is somewhat different than Speaker-designate Duran’s view. “Our caucus tends to believe that market forces should determine which energy sources are used by Colorado’s citizens,” he says. “Although we support all forms of energy, including renewable energy, we don’t support mandates that increase costs to rural consumers.”

Working together
So, will a Senate president- designate from rural Colorado and a House speaker-designate from Denver be able to work together to solve Colorado’s problems and move the state forward? The answer from both is a resounding “yes.” Says Rep. Duran: “I look forward to working with Sen. Grantham, and across the aisle, to move Colorado forward in areas where I know we have common ground, including education, transportation and infrastructure. We have more in common than divides us, and I know we can work together to have a productive legislative session.”

Sen. Grantham concurs: “We won’t always agree with bills passed by the House and they won’t always agree with bills passed by the Senate. But I think we can still work together to balance the budget and find ways to spur economic development in rural Colorado.”

The band Deep Purple continues to tour, with different members, decades after its founding. And it looks like Colorado’s purple politics will also share the stage for the foreseeable future… bump, bump, bum…bump, bump, da-dum…bump, bump, bum…bump-bum.

By Justin LaBerge

Most military bases are located in rural areas, and the power systems at some bases are operated by electric cooperatives. A disproportionately large percentage of our nation’s troops — some estimates suggest as high as 40 percent — come from rural America. Even the organization responsible for representing electric cooperatives in Washington, D.C., the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, was once led by a retired Army general.

Last year, America’s electric cooperatives began a new chapter in their long history of support for the military with the launch of Serve Our Co-ops, Serve Our Country, a nationwide initiative to honor and hire military veterans and their spouses.

The program was developed to help electric cooperatives address a generational turnover in their workforce. Over the next five years, NRECA estimates electric co-ops will need to hire approximately 15,000 new employees to replace retiring baby boomers.

Those new workers will fill roles in every department, from lineworkers climbing poles to member service representatives answering questions to engineering and industrial technology experts designing and managing a smarter electric grid.

In addition to the technical skills these jobs require, electric cooperative employees must be hard working, disciplined, loyal, safety conscious and team oriented — qualities that are common among military veterans.

This summer, Serve Our Co-ops, Serve Our Country celebrated a major milestone when former Air Force Capt. Jeremiah Sloan became the first veteran officially hired through the program.

The story of how Sloan landed his new job as an electrical engineer at Craighead Electric Cooperative in Jonesboro, Arkansas, reads like the plot of a Hollywood movie.

For several months, Craighead Electric CEO Brian Duncan worked to fill the position. Duncan advertised the opening in local papers and national job sites and attracted a number of highly qualified candidates.

Sloan’s application was among those strong candidates, but he wouldn’t be available to start for six months when his Air Force service ended.

Duncan, hoping to fill the position sooner than that, made offers to two other well-qualified applicants, but was unable to come to terms with either.

Shortly after the second candidate fell through, Duncan attended a national conference for electric cooperative CEOs.

One of the sessions featured two fellow co-op CEOs, one of whom was a 25-year Air Force veteran, discussing the newly launched veteran hiring initiative.

“The whole time they’re talking I’m thinking about Jeremiah; we probably need to look at this guy. For these guys coming out of the military, what better way to say ‘thank you’ than to give them a job,” Duncan said.

They scheduled an interview and it didn’t take long for Duncan to realize the co-op found its next engineer in Sloan.

“He was extremely professional. It was straight down the line. ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘No, sir.’ Very detailed in his answers to all of the questions. Very thoughtful in his answers. It was the perfect interview, you might say,” Duncan said.

Sloan brings more than a strong resumé and professional demeanor to his new position at Craighead Electric. He also brings a love for the community and a desire to return to his roots.

“I grew up in northeast Arkansas,” Sloan said. “My family is a long line of farmers, and they’re actually on Craighead Electric’s lines. The whole reason my wife and I decided to separate from the Air Force was to return home and be close to family.”

Though Sloan is the first veteran hired through the initiative, he won’t be the last; several other veterans have already been hired through the program. In addition to nationwide outreach through NRECA, approximately 50 electric cooperatives across the country already took the pledge to join the effort on the local level.

The support of veterans and reservists extends far beyond the scope of the formal Serve Our Co-ops, Serve Our Country program into the routine operation of many electric cooperatives.

Two managers at AECI, a wholesale supplier of electric equipment owned by the electric cooperatives of Arkansas, were recently honored by the U.S. Marine Corps for their support of a Marine reservist working at the cooperative’s warehouse in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In August, Russ Dilley and Eric Creekmore were presented the Patriot Award for giving AECI truck driver Michael Henderson the workplace flexibility he needs to serve in the Marine Corps Reserves.

Serve Our Co-ops, Serve Our Country is another way America’s electric cooperatives can show concern for community while building a next generation workforce that will deliver the exceptional service co-op members expect and deserve.

To learn more about the program and career opportunities for veterans at electric cooperatives, visit www.ServeVets.coop. Cathy Cash and Denny Gainer contributed to this report.

Justin LaBerge writes on consumer and cooperative affairs for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.

By Justin LaBerge

In two months, Americans will go to the polls and cast votes for a president, 34 senators, 435 members of Congress, 12 governors, 5,920 state legislators and countless other local races.

While the presidential race is at the top of most voters’ minds, it is the state and local races that have a more direct and immediate impact on the “kitchen table” issues that matter most to families. For rural America, the stakes in this election are especially high.

An annual snapshot prepared by U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service reported, “rural employment in mid-2015 was still 3.2 percent below its prerecession peak in 2007.”

That same report found that rural America continues to experience population decline driven by migration of residents to larger urban areas.

The trends underlying much of this migration — issues such as globalization, technology advances and the shift from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-and knowledge-based economy — are largely beyond the control of any community, state or even country.

If rural America is to enjoy a prosperous future, it will be thanks to the ingenuity, self-reliance and determination of its people.

The rural electrification movement is a prime example of this.

When for-profit utilities based in urban areas declined to build electric lines in sparsely populated rural areas, the residents of those communities banded together to form cooperatives and build their own systems with the help of government loans.

Today, America’s electric cooperatives are finding new ways to support and promote the interests of the communities they serve.

CO-OPS VOTE
One program that is particularly relevant today is the Co-ops Vote initiative. This nonpartisan, nationwide program is designed to promote civic engagement and voter participation in communities served by electric cooperatives.

Co-op members can go to vote.coop to gather information on the voter registration process in their state, dates of elections, information on the candidates running in those elections and explanations of key issues affecting rural America.

Visitors to the website can also take a pledge to be a co-op voter. By taking this pledge, they can send a message to candidates at all levels of government that electric cooperative members will be showing up at the polls in force and are paying close attention to the issues that impact the quality of life in their communities.

GROWING OUR OWN LEADERS
Mil Duncan, a noted scholar on rural economic development issues, said in a recent essay, “Far and away the biggest challenge rural development practitioners face is the need for greater human capital — for more leaders, more entrepreneurs… .”

To answer the call for more rural leaders, America’s electric cooperatives created the Washington, D.C., Youth Tour program.

Each year, approximately 1,700 high school students representing electric cooperatives from across the nation converge in Washington, D.C., for a weeklong, all-expense paid leadership development experience.

Several previous Youth Tour participants became university presidents, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and members of Congress. Many more returned home to serve in the many underappreciated leadership roles — coaches, small-business owners, church deacons, county commissioners — that form the backbone of our communities.

MAKING THE MOST OF NATURAL STRENGTHS
Members of cooperatives are empowered to explore different approaches to solving problems and figure out what solutions are best for their community. This applies to the energy sources they use to generate electricity, the technologies they use to operate the system and the policies and procedures they adopt. What works for co-op members in Colorado might not be right for co-op members in Oregon.

The same holds true for rural economic development, according to Harvard Business School’s Institute for Strategy & Competitiveness.

In its list of six key steps for boosting rural economies, Harvard researchers said, “Rural economic development should focus on the unique strengths of each area rather than concentrating on ameliorating generic weaknesses.”

While many rural communities face similar challenges driven by similar factors, the best way to address those issues can vary widely from community to community.

FOSTERING CONNECTIVITY
When electric cooperatives brought electricity to rural America, the playing field leveled and small towns experienced a renaissance. A similar trend is unfolding as broadband access makes its way to more rural communities.

One recent high-profile example involves Christopher Ingraham, a data journalist at The Washington Post.

In 2015, he wrote a short article based on a data set from the USDA that ranked American communities on qualities that are often indicators of desirable places to live. The community with the lowest score in the USDA ranking was Red Lake County in Minnesota.

His story generated a lot of comments, including many from the people of Red Lake County who encouraged him to come out for a visit. He did, and was struck by the kindness of the residents and beauty of the landscape.

As a journalist who writes about data, Ingraham isn’t tied to any particular location. As long as he has a reliable high-speed internet connection, he can download the government data sets he needs to do his job and email his editor the finished stories.

In March of this year, he announced in another story that Red Lake County won him over, and he planned to move there with his wife and young children.

He can make this move because of high-speed broadband.

The shift to a knowledge-based economy might be hurting some traditional rural industries, but as more and more companies embrace “teleworking,” employees who were forced to move to large cities to work in certain industries can keep their jobs while working remotely from rural communities.

Expanding access to broadband in rural areas is one of the key issues addressed by the Co-ops Vote program, and Ingraham’s story is just one example why.

TAKING ACTION FOR THE FUTURE
The challenges facing rural America will not be solved by one person, one idea or one action. But on November 8, we will determine which leaders we trust to enact policies that will help small communities help themselves.

Study the issues that are critical to the future of your community, look at the positions and backgrounds of every candidate running for every race from president to county road commissioner, decide which ones are best qualified to address these issues and then join millions of fellow electric cooperative members at the polls.

Justin LaBerge writes on consumer and cooperative affairs for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.

By Justin LaBerge

Over the next five years, America’s electric cooperatives expect to hire nearly 15,000 people to fill jobs ranging from information technology specialist to lineworker. Investor-owned utilities, municipal power systems and private power line contractors will also need thousands of skilled workers to keep our nation’s energy grid running safely and reliably.

Despite high demand, good pay, excellent benefits, opportunities to advance and a stable long-term outlook, America is facing a shortage of lineworkers.

To address this looming shortage, energy companies, including America’s electric cooperatives, teamed up to create the Center for Energy Workforce Development. Even celebrities took notice. Mike Rowe, who gained fame as host of the Discovery Channel’s series “Dirty Jobs,” created a foundation to raise awareness of the great career opportunities offered by skilled trades that are too often overlooked by guidance counselors and eager parents.

Trade groups and celebrities can raise awareness of an issue, but it takes more than awareness to keep the lights on. Training programs are the vital link to help motivated individuals become our nation’s next generation of lineworkers.

No “typical” student
In Colorado, we have some notable lineworker training programs, such as Mesa Hotline School and Western Colorado Community College, both in Grand Junction, and Rocky Mountain Lineman School in Trinidad.

At lineworker school, students learn about safety, underground and overhead procedures, installation, repair, operation of equipment, pole climbing and more important aspects of this skilled profession.

A common thread through these programs is that they attract students from all walks of life. Many are young people who recently graduated from high school. Others are older and have more experience.

The older students tend to be a mix of individuals looking for a better job with advancement opportunities, workers who were laid off from manufacturing jobs and veterans who recently completed their military service. No matter their background, all students in these programs must love the outdoors and have a strong work ethic.

The tuition assistance options for lineworker programs are almost as diverse as the students themselves. For apprentice lineworkers already employed by co-ops, the tuition for these programs is often paid in full by the co-op. Returning veterans can use GI Bill funds, and many states have additional programs to help veterans enter the civilian workforce. Manufacturing workers who lost their jobs to companies overseas might be eligible for job-retraining funds.

In addition to these specialized types of financial assistance, lineworker training programs typically qualify for all the traditional education funding sources, including scholarships, grants and student loans.

Even those who rely on loans and their own funds to pay for their lineworker education will benefit from the much lower costs of community colleges as compared to four-year schools and private, for-profit colleges.

Genuine opportunity
In a September 26, 2015, column published by Education and Career News, Mike Rowe wrote: “Every day, millions of people looking for work fail to consider a host of genuine opportunities, in part because they don’t appear on our collective list of ‘top jobs.’ Job satisfaction is important, but ultimately, vocational happiness has less to do with what you do than with who you are. In other words, character — like opportunity — won’t be found on a list.”

Few organizations value character as much as America’s not-for-profit, member-owned electric cooperatives, and lineworker is just one of the many “genuine opportunities” they offer.

Justin LaBerge writes on consumer and cooperative affairs for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.

By Paul Wesslund

Solar energy is really heating up. Use of photovoltaic cells to make electricity grew 30 percent each of the last two years. Experts expect that pace to continue because of falling prices for solar equipment and December’s three-year extension of federal tax credits for solar energy.

As with any new and booming technology, solar brings promise and problems. On the upside, making electricity from sunlight would seem to solve the need for energy. But the sun doesn’t shine all the time we want power, the equipment can be expensive and the nation’s electricity transmission system was not designed for the widespread use of solar energy.

“We’ve seen very quick growth already,” says Andrew Cotter, program and product manager for renewable and distributed generation at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. “And we’re going to see more of it.”

Electric co-ops are among the leaders in testing how community solar technology will work in the real world.

“The consumer-owned cooperative business model is promoting the growth of solar,” says Tracy Warren, senior communications manager at NRECA. “Co-ops are getting involved in solar energy because their members are asking them about it.”

The country will need more solar. U.S. energy experts say we will not be able to meet national energy goals — achieving energy independence and meeting new requirements connected to the government’s Clean Power Plan — unless we increase our solar energy capacity.

Now before you start thinking that solar power is taking over, you should know that the huge growth in solar energy starts from a small number; even with the explosion of the past few years, solar energy still generates less than 1 percent of the nation’s electricity. It will take many years of equally strong growth to even get near the portions of electricity generated nationally by wind and other non-solar renewable energy (6 percent), hydroelectric power (6 percent), nuclear (19 percent) or coal and natural gas (about 33 percent each).

The basic way that solar energy works is that when light hits certain specially-designed materials, it releases electrons from the material’s atoms, and electricity is really nothing more than flowing electrons. When these materials are manufactured into photovoltaic cells and connected, they can produce enough electricity to power a calculator, a lightbulb, a house or even several houses.

The recent growth of solar is happening in three different ways. One is utility-scale solar — large banks of photovoltaic panels that produce enough electricity for thousands of homes or businesses. Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, which supplies electricity to 18 of Colorado’s 22 electric co-ops, buys power from the 30-megawatt Cimarron Solar Facility for its members. When it was built, it was the largest facility of its kind.

A second growth area is community solar. United Power, an electric co-op in Brighton, pioneered this concept back in 2009 when it built a solar power facility. Interested United Power members bought a share of the electricity the solar farm produced. Now 13 of the state’s 22 electric co-ops have similar community solar facilities and more co-ops will be adding them in the near future.

The third solar category goes by the fancy term “distributed generation.” That just means that the nature of solar cells can be made in lots of different sizes that can be distributed to make electricity from a lot of different places, from a little cell that powers a handheld calculator to a panel the size of a tabletop that could operate a remote water well on a cattle ranch, without the expense of building a long-distance power line.

Rooftop solar is an increasingly popular kind of distributed generation that allows homeowners to set up a bank of solar cells on their rooftops. Rooftop solar raises some of the trickiest issues for this developing source of electricity.

One of those issues comes from home solar energy owners selling excess electricity back to the utility. Designing those reverse rates can be complicated, since they need to account for a lot of factors, including the homeowner’s need for electricity all the time, not just when the solar panels are working.

Other technical issues include safety. Lineworkers repairing what they expect is a de-energized line can’t afford to be surprised by home solar panels suddenly sending electricity back through the wires.

“There is a whole new set of safety protocols and best practices that are being developed,” Cotter says. “When home solar generation becomes part of the electric grid, it is plugging into what has been called the most complex machine in the world.”

Another area of caution involves the cost and financing. The popularity of rooftop solar created an industry of vendors making a variety of claims in their sales pitches. Cotter advises people to be smart shoppers, read the fine print and get advice from your local electric co-op. He especially advises asking whether the homeowner or the vendor is getting the benefits of the renewable energy credits known as RECs.

“Electricity is a commodity; it is all the same whether it comes from a photovoltaic system or a power plant,” Cotter says.

Cotter also says some of the claims for how soon the solar project will pay for itself are based on unrealistic projections of how much electric rates will increase in the future. “Keep an eye out for any claims higher than 2 to 3 percent per year,” Cotter says. “Every utility is different, and members interested in solar energy for their home should look to their local electric co-op as the first source of trusted information.”

Paul Wesslund writes on cooperative issues for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.